Why Onions?

 By Farmer Richard with Gwen Anderson

Red Cipollini Onions drying in the Greenhouse

Onions were one of the first vegetables that came to Richard’s attention as having significant health benefits.  Four years ago, we published an article called Alliums to Fight Cancer that delved into some of the health benefits of onions and garlic specifically regarding their cancer fighting properties. Onions also boast the ability to help prevent osteoporosis, lower blood pressure, lower the level of cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood, have anti-clotting benefits, as well as being anti-inflammatory, antibacterial and antiviral. This is due largely to the organosulfur compounds that onions contain.  Organosulfur compounds contain some powerful antioxidants, including quercetin and other flavonoids that encourage glutathione production.  Quercetin is known to slow tumor growth, especially in colon cancer, promote prostate health, and is an antihistamine.  Flavonoids may reduce the risk of stroke as well as Parkinson’s and cardiovascular disease.  One study done by the Journal of Hypertension in 2017 reported that participants that consistently ate more alliums (onions and garlic, to name a few) reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 64%.  Glutathione is a powerful antioxidant that boosts the immune system and protects the heart as well as removing toxins.  Sulfur, found in organosulfur compounds, is also the main component that assists with protein synthesis and creating cell structures.

Onion field from June this year

The organosulfur compounds are most beneficial when raw, but you can maximize the benefit of cooked onions (and garlic, too!) by allowing them to set for 10 minutes after cutting them before cooking them.  This process allows the enzymes released by the onions while being cut to fully react with the sulfur-containing molecules, converting them into their beneficial forms.  Aside from the organosulfur compounds, onions are also an excellent source of vitamin C and phytonutrients.  Phytonutrients help overall in maintaining good health and contain anticancer and antimicrobial properties.  Onions also contain fiber and folic acid, a B vitamin that helps make healthy new cells.  They are low calorie, very low in sodium, and have no fat or cholesterol.

Egyptian Walking Onion

It was over 40 years ago when Richard first learned about the health benefits of onions.  Since then, he has persisted in finding varieties of onion that can be available year round locally, allowing us to eat some form of onion every day.  Besides the huge health benefits, onions add flavor to almost every meal.  Our goal is to have one or more members of the onion/garlic family in every box of our 30 box season.  We start the season with perennial chives and two multiplying heirloom onions, potato onions and Egyptian Walking Onions, as well as the wild ramps harvested from our woods.  These meet our onion needs until our grown-from-seed transplants are ready.  We grow about 379,000 onion plants in our greenhouses, starting in late February, and transplant them to the field in early April when they are ready for the move

.

We are presently delivering the very fast growing sweet Spanish type called Zoey in this week’s CSA boxes.  The very fast growing Spanish varieties, including Sierra Blanca which we delivered previously, are very mild, even when raw.  The later, slower growing varieties allow us to store onions for six months or more!  These storage onions have a stronger flavor than the earlier varieties when raw, due to the higher amount of sulfur compounds, which also aid in storage.  When cooked, much of the sulfur volatilizes and leaves us with a sweet caramelized onion flavor.  This is because onions also contain a high amount of sugar, which becomes more pronounced when the sulfur compounds break down.

Green Scallions planted on raised beds with reflective plastic mulch.

Onions are sometimes challenging to grow because they grow slowly and are poor weed competitors.  They also have a tiny insect pest called the onion thrip that lives in the growth point of the onion.  The thrips pierce tiny holes in the young leaves, which allows bacteria to enter the plant.  That bacteria can later cause a soft rot in the top of a mature dry onion.  To solve these problems we plant our tiny greenhouse onion plants into a raised bed covered with a reflective plastic mulch that prevents the thrips from finding the onions.  It works!  Without the thrips, we have almost no neck rot, even in a wet, stormy year.

Onions require regular water to thrive.  Our onions received water with fertilizer that includes sea weeds, micro and macro nutrients and beneficial bacteria through the line buried under each row at least once a week.  Our irrigation/fertigation crew did a great job this year.  Alejandro also did regular foliar applications to provide additional nutrients and for disease prevention.  The result: a record yield with excellent quality that should supply all boxes through December and still allow produce plus for your winter stash!  This year’s crop appears to be our best ever!

Red Onions and Shallots safely drying in the greenhouse

Last week, we did a big onion and shallot harvest.  Of our 1.8 acres of onions, two-thirds are safely stored in the greenhouse and cooler right now.  We hope to finish the harvest later this week or early next week.  We estimate the total yield form this crop will equate to about 9 onions in each box for the remainder of the season!  The harvest so far has been abundant, as it was earlier this season with the early purple and green scallions and then purple Cipollini onions we delivered.  We bring onions in from the field when there is still some green in the top.  To leave them in the field longer risks sun burn on hot days and bacteria entering the neck.  We hand pull all of our onions when ready for harvest, then leave them to dry briefly in the field.  After a day or two, the onions are crated, hauled back to the farm and organized onto our greenhouse benches to finish drying.  The greenhouse roof is now covered with an 85% opaque cloth, which helps shade the onions from direct sunlight and reduces the temperature in the greenhouse.  After 1-2 weeks of drying, we top and clean the onions before transferring them to a cold, dry cooler for storage.

Shallots drying in the greenhouse

Our production system involves a great deal of manual labor!  Conventional onion production involves nasty neonicotinoid systemic insecticides to control the thrips.  Neonicotinoids are an insecticide that has been linked to many adverse human health and ecological effects, including decimating the honey bee and bird populations.  Conventional producers also use a mechanical topper to top and clean onions.  We have a mechanical topper, but find that it causes damage to the onion, so we chose to top them by hand instead.

While growing onions is challenging and labor intensive, we firmly believe the benefits of providing them year round makes the challenge well worth the effort.  We hope you have gained a greater appreciation for the health powerhouse that is the onion.

Thank You for Your Input! 2019 Season Survey Results

By Gwen Anderson

First CSA Box of 2019 Season

Our 2019 End of the Season Survey wrapped up on January 4th this year, and we have spent the last few months compiling, reviewing, and considering all of the information we gathered from the responses.  First off, we would like to once again thank everyone who took the time to participate in the survey!  Your feedback helps us make business decisions and improvements so we can better serve our members.  To show our appreciation, we wanted to take the time to share some of the feedback and information we received from you!

We put a lot of thought into the types of questions we ask on our surveys to garner the best information to help us improve in ways that are important to our members.  If you were one of the 528 people who took our survey, you may have noticed quite a few questions about our newsletters.  We invest a lot of time in creating newsletter content and this is one of our primary means of connecting with members every week during the season.  We feel the newsletters are important, and we have had members express this to us in the past as well, but it is hard for us to gauge the value of these types of correspondences without further feedback.  Are we hitting the target and giving our members useful information, or are we just shooting in the dark?

What did we find out?  Yes, people are reading the newsletters!  98% of our members said they read the "What’s in the Box" newsletter at least half the time, with over 77% reading it every week!  Over 66% of our members are regularly reading the "Weed ‘Em and Reap" newsletter as well.  We received a lot of positive feedback about our newsletters, and it made us feel like we are indeed doing the right thing with them!  Last season, due to feedback from a previous survey, we tried something new and printed two newsletters.  There is a lot of information we want to share with you, and a single sheet of paper had been too limiting.  Previously, we adopted a blog format in order to provide more information for our members, and put “teaser” articles in our printed newsletters to encourage people to visit our blog for the remainder of the article.  We received some feedback from members that this type of printed newsletter was irritating; they wanted the entire article without being directed elsewhere.  So, we decided to split the newsletter into two portions.  The "What’s in the Box" newsletter would contain the vegetable feature, recipes and the box contents for that week.  The "Weed ‘Em and Reap" newsletter would be the place for articles about other important topics including farm updates, news reviews, employee highlights, or whatever other information we feel is important to share with our members.  This change means there are two folders with newsletters at your pickup site, one with the "What’s In The Box" newsletter, and one with the "Weed ‘Em and Reap" newsletter.  It was clear from our last survey that there are still many people who are unaware of the change we made to the printed newsletters.  We are planning to continue to do the two newsletter format this year for those of you who prefer the paper copies; and as always, the information will still be linked in our email communications and posted on our blog as well.

Hon Tsai Tai & Shiitake Potstickers

Recipes continue to be the most valued resource we provide for you, and the request for more recipes topped out the list of suggestions for improving our newsletters.  The "Cooking with the Box" segment we offer on our blog was started in 2017 as a means to address this request and features recipes and suggestions for every item in the box!  We do our best to provide you with as many recipes as we can each week, with a little something for various levels of cooking experience.  Nearly 82% of our members said they read the "Cooking with the Box" segment, and over 69% said they regularly use the suggestions found therein.  If the "Cooking with the Box" segment still leaves you craving more recipes, check out our Facebook group!  There are always great posts about what people are cooking up with their boxes, including recipe links.  Sometimes, we even borrow the recipes shared in the Facebook group and use them in the "Cooking with the Box" segment!

Additional feedback we received for improving our newsletters included providing more vegetable storage information.  We were also asked to provide an earlier “best guess” or a "What’s in the Next Box" section to give you an idea of what might be included in the current week’s box as well as the next week’s box.  We are currently brainstorming on how we can improve our communications to include more of this valuable information.

CSA Box from June 2019

As your CSA farm, we strive to provide you with as much information as possible to ensure that your CSA experience is both positive and successful.  By asking what resources you may have been struggling to find last season, we were able to identify additional resources to call attention to or create.  Vegetable storage information showed up often in this question as well.  There were also a great deal of requests for more information on how to preserve, freeze or dry vegetable for later use.  As of now, we have a list of vegetable storage suggestions in the back of our current CSA calendars and include this information in our weekly vegetable features.  We will continue to include storage suggestions in our calendars each year.  Due to your feedback, we realize that we need to have the information available in more locations that are easier to reference.  We will do our best to provide this information more consistently in our newsletters each week, and we are looking into how to get the information available on our website.

Fresh Ginger

“What do our CSA members want in their boxes?” is always a fun question to ask on a survey, and it is one we ask ourselves each year when we do our planning in the winter.  This year, we took the guesswork out and decided to ask our members directly.  The answer? Ginger!  And in one very emphatic case it was GINGER GINGER GINGER GINGER GINGER GINGER PLEASE BRING BACK THE GINGER!!!!!  Lemongrass was a not-too-distant second.  We hear you, and would love to grow these items for our CSA boxes this year.  For the sake of transparency, the seed for ginger and lemongrass has been challenging to source this year.  We are still trying to secure enough seed to plant in order to provide these highly requested crops, and are hopeful that we will be successful.  Ginger is grown in our cold frame greenhouse, so we had to take a few years off from growing it in order to rotate crops in this space just like we do in the field.  We’re looking forward to growing both ginger and lemongrass again this year!

Egyptian Spinach

The next three runners up were globe artichokes, Egyptian spinach and purple Napa cabbage.  The silver lining is that we will for sure be growing Egyptian spinach and purple Napa cabbage this season!  Our plan is to harvest the Egyptian spinach for summer boxes, and to have the purple Napa cabbage available in the fall.  We’ve grown Egyptian spinach before, and used it for a delicious soup we are excited to try again.  Purple Napa cabbage is a new variety and we are anxious to try it out!

The last batch of questions we ask on our survey were geared towards marketing.  We know, as it has been proven time and time again, that our customers are our best source of advertisement and are a wellspring of creative ideas and solutions.  By finding out what it is that you value about being part of our CSA program, we can use those values to draw in more like-minded members.  By asking what we can do to help you promote your CSA farm, we are able to create resources and promotion materials that reflect what would grab your attention, and thus the attention of the people who share similar values.  We have already heard from some members requesting the promotional materials we have available, and we are always happy to oblige!  We have several different printed material options available, and we have plenty of pictures and short messages we can send out for our members to post to social media.  If any of this sounds like something you would be interested in, please feel free to call or send us an email for more information!

Garver Feed Mill, photo from garverfeedmill.com

We want, and need, to build our membership in order to keep our CSA program sustainable, so we asked for your suggestions to help up improve our outreach.  One of the top suggestions we received was to partner with area businesses.  We are happy to announce that we are now partnering with Twin Town Fitness and Lakewinds Minnetonka in the Twin Cities.  In the Madison area, we are partnering with three new UW Health System locations, the VA Hospital, MGE and the Garver Feed Mill.  We’ve also added an additional residential site in Middleton for our Madison Thursday route!  On top of these confirmed new locations for next season, there are a few potential sites in all our CSA areas we are still looking into.  As exciting as the new sites are, we still need our current members’ help bringing in new members.  We’ve added the sites, please help us add the people!  What tools do we have at our disposal to help you bring in new members?  We offer a new member coupon, which will give the new member between $15 and $25 off their first season depending on the share they select.  This coupon also comes with a referral line, and the referring member will receive a $20 gift certificate!  Another great way to get our standard $10 referral coupon is to write your name in the referral line on sign up forms when you hand them out to neighbors, friends and family, or that stranger in the co-op line!  When they sign up, we’ll send you a coupon!

Andrea Enjoying the company of some of our CSA members
at Strawberry Day 2019

What do our members value most about being part of our CSA program?  The vegetables, of course!  The top five responses we received on this question were high quality produce, supporting local businesses, variety of produce, freshness, and being organic.  We were a little surprised that organic didn’t come in higher on the totem pole, but we were very pleased to hear how highly our quality, freshness and diversity were regarded.  Community was also a common theme we ran across in the comments of this section.  While we appreciate the positive feedback about our vegetables, what really touched our hearts was the human connections our CSA program has fostered.  We enjoyed hearing that the information we provide to you in newsletters strengthens the connection between us and how important that connection is to you.  The connections our members have made between each other were also a joy to hear about!  (Thank you to our Powderhorn site host for being “a wonderful person and a great site manager!”)  We also care a great deal about our land and the people who work on it, so it was also wonderful to hear that the care and dedication we strive for in maintaining both is something our members value as well.  Our organization and attention to detail is something we also loved hearing is appreciated.

There were many other interesting things we found out through our survey, too.  We’ve received quite a few requests for videos of all kinds: cooking demos, field work, newsletter recaps, etc.  The videos we have made in the past have been fun to do, and broadening our horizons in this form of communication is something we have a great interest in.  We are currently brainstorming how to incorporate this into our day as well as what type of content will garner the most interest from our members.  As well as videos, we received many suggestions for having a larger social media presence in general.  After carefully considering our options, we have decided to continue using Facebook and to start a Harmony Valley Farm Instagram page!  Please feel free to follow us on Instagram @harmonyvalleyfarm for more great updates from your farm.

Merchandise was another suggestion that popped up here and there.  We do currently have t-shirts available for purchase during our on-farm events, and have been thinking about what other cool things our members might like to see as well (like re-usable tote bags)!  My personal favorite suggestion was to create a hot sauce subscription program to supplement our CSA.  The Korean Chili Sauce has been a big hit, and it might be fun to try new sauces in the future.  We don’t have any immediate plans to pursue this, although it is a really hot idea.

Our website was also a subject we received lots of feedback on.  We understand the one we currently have needs improvement, which is why we are working with our friends at Leum Tech to roll out a site that has a fresh look, greater functionality and will work great with mobile devices!  Converting our information to the new site takes time, and we are currently prioritizing what needs to be on the site for launch day.  Eventually we will have features like online ordering and an integrated blog!  Our current recipe and newsletter archives are going to be available much like they are now, and we are looking for ways to make our future newsletters and recipes easier to locate and search as well.  Additionally, we will be releasing a new and improved Vegetable Gallery that will include photos, descriptions, storage information, and much more!

As our review of the 2019 End of Season Survey comes to a close, we would like to thank you one more time for the invaluable feedback you have provided.  Your support, positive feedback and creative ideas have helped in more ways than a simple newsletter and a “thank you” could ever express.  We are truly looking forward to doing an even better job at being your CSA farm next season.  See you then!

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The Journey of Sweet Corn: From Seed to Table

By Gwen Anderson

Sweet corn, the iconic summer vegetable.  You can hardly drive a mile in the countryside without running into fields’ worth of corn of some kind (and probably not the tasty sweet corn type).  But you know right away what it is, with its tall stalks, long green leaves, and silky ears. Even in the city, farmers park their trucks, beds piled high with the golden goodness, off the shoulder of the highways and in busy parking lots to sell their crop to passersby (but the back of the truck is a hot place for corn, and allows the sugars to quickly convert to starch).  Everyone loves sweet corn, which is exactly why we grow it. Richard has a saying: “Some crops you grow for profit. Some you grow to make friends. We grow corn to make friends.” How do we make friends with sweet corn? By prudently selecting the right varieties, careful planning, vigilantly combating pests, and having an expert harvest crew.  If everything is done right, we will have the best sweet corn ever.

The process starts with selecting the best corn seed.  Like with all lifeforms, genetics plays a vital role in the characteristics that show up in corn.  All types of corn, whether field corn, decorative corn, popcorn, or sweet corn, are the same species: Zea mays.  The genes needed to make corn sweet instead of starchy are recessive genes.  The starchy gene is the dominant gene. Genes come in pairs, one from each “parent.”  If the genes passed down from the “parents” are the same, that is the characteristic that is displayed in the “child.”  However, if the genes in the pair don’t match, it is the dominant gene’s characteristic that is displayed. Take humans for example:  Brown eyes are a dominant trait, blue is recessive. If both parents have blue eyes, they will have children with blue eyes. If one parent has blue eyes and the other has brown eyes, the children could have either brown or blue eyes.  If both parents have brown eyes, the children could still have brown or blue eyes. It really just depends on what kind of genes the parents are carrying.

There are three recessive “sweet genes” in corn: sugary (su), sugary enhanced (se), and supersweet or shrunken-2 (sh2).  Su is the oldest of the sweet corn varieties to have been cultivated. It has around 9% sugar content which quickly converts to starch once it is harvested.  The short shelf life of this sweet corn is traded off for good corn flavor, mild sweetness, and a creamy texture. Se corn has between 16-18% sugar content and has a slower sugar to starch conversion rate than su corn, which means that sweet flavor is more stable.  The kernels on se corn are also extremely tender; so tender they are easily damaged. Sh2 corn has about 35% sugar and has a super slow rate of converting sugar to starch. The kernels are also thick, so it stores well. However, those thick kernels also make for a crunchy eating experience.  But remember how genes come in pairs? It turns out genetics isn’t exactly as cut and dry as recessive and dominant genes, and by mixing the recessive traits we can make new kinds of corn: Synergistic (su and sh2 mix) and Augmented (sh2 and se). Synergistic corn blends the sweetness of sh2 corn with the creamy texture and tenderness of su corn while giving it a long enough shelf life to do some traveling.  Augmented corn does basically the same thing, just with the se corn instead of the su corn.  All these hybrids were created by naturally crossbreeding the corn.  We do not use any GMO altered seeds of any kind, nor do we use seeds that have “seed treatments” that contain various poisons such as neonicotinoids.

With this lesson of genetics under our belts, we pick up a seed catalogue.  Farmer Richard has done plenty of trial and error, and has also learned to trust the advice of our experienced seed rep, Phil Timm.  We buy all of our corn seed from the same company because of the relationship we have built with Phil.  With his help, we try new corn varieties and also have been able to find our favorites: Nirvana, Sweetness, Kickoff, and Awesome.

Sweet corn in early July this year

During the winter, we plan which crops we are going to plant and where.  This helps us decide how much seed we are going to purchase. With the plans made and the seeds purchased, it is a waiting game for the right time to plant.  We normally plant corn, weather permitting, around May 1st.  For the first planting of sweet corn, it is essential to pick a variety that has “cold soil vigor.”  We also wait for the perfect time to plant it: a day with nice, bright sun that will be shining for the next 24 hours.  Depending on the soil temperature, we are able to play around a little with how deep we plant the seeds.  For example, we would plant the seeds more shallow if the soil was still too cool in order for the sun to warm the seeds better and encourage them to germinate. However, this can be risky because birds love corn seeds.  Last year, the red-winged blackbirds found our first shallow planted corn in the field, dug it up and ate a good portion of the crop before it could germinate!

Sweet corn field during harvest time

Another thing we need to keep in mind when we are planting our sweet corn is what kind of sweet corn we are planting.  Because of sweet corn’s complicated genetics, it is important to keep sweet corn isolated from other types of corn; this is even true for different types of sweet corn!  Corn is wind pollinated, so we need to be cognizant of preventing cross-pollination.  It is recommended to keep at least a 250 foot distance between corn varieties that will be tasseling up at the same time to avoid cross-pollination between the varieties. Another option is to time the plantings to ensure at least 14 days between the estimated tassel dates to keep corn from cross-pollinating.  If we follow these guidelines, we are able to keep the true genetics of the variety of corn we plant which is then displayed in the characteristics of the corn we pick.  When Richard took me out to one of our corn fields last week, it was situated in a beautiful field next to our winter squash crop, surrounded by wildlife habitat, forest, and rolling hills. It was picturesque, to be sure, but it was also very far away from any other potential corn fields.

I mentioned the importance of knowing when the corn is going to be “tasseling up,” or getting ready to be pollinated to create the kernels.  The pollen of corn is in the tassels.  Corn takes 65 to 90 days to mature, and that range is broken into 3 different sub-seasons: early varieties (less than 70 days to mature), mid-season varieties (70-84 days to mature), and late varieties (more than 84 days to mature).  If we were going to be planting different types of corn together, we would want to make sure that they were in different sub-seasons. By planting corn from different sub-seasons, we can continue to deliver corn as long as possible throughout corn’s growing season, while also avoiding the potential for cross pollination between the varieties.

Richard explaining how the fake owls work

Earlier I had mentioned how the red-winged blackbirds had found our first crop of corn last year.  Birds are only one of the pests we have to combat when growing sweet corn. We have a couple different tactics we use to try to deter birds, but like all deterrents, they need to be in place before the animals figure out there is tasty corn to be had.  We hang “scare eye” balloons with long silver streamers on poles out in the field. These “scare eyes” work on the same principle that protects moths that camouflage themselves with large eye-like patterns on their wings: big eyes mean big predators. The silver streamers reflect light and move in the wind, also scaring the birds away.  We also have fake owls and hawks posted on the fence lines. These fake birds of prey are solar powered and have moving heads, keeping an ever-vigilant eye on the fields for us and keeping pesky corn eating birds at bay. The fence these sentinels sit on is plastic mesh tied to poles we place in the field that are 6 feet high.  This fence is a deterrent to deer, but again, only if they don’t know what is on the other side of it. Corn is a much tastier treat then grass and leaves, and sweet corn is so much better still than the field corn that is growing elsewhere.  The fence also doesn’t do much to keep raccoons out. So, in addition to the fence, we have an electrical ribbon running through the mesh near the bottom of it to surprise and deter any raccoons who try to pass through the fence.

Richard checking the pheromone trap for earworm moths

Now that we have the critters dealt with, there is one last pest we need to protect our corn from: Earworms.  Earworms are moth larvae that hatch from eggs that are laid on the silks of corn ears. When they hatch, they spend a few days on the silks before they eat their way down into the ear of corn.  To combat the earworms, we use an organic approved Bt spray, a naturally occurring bacteria that is toxic to the earworms. We have pheromone traps set up in the cornfields that attract the moths when they are ready to start laying eggs.  When we have moths in the traps, we know it is time to spray the corn. With the right timing, the newly hatched earworms eat the Bt we’ve applied to the corn silk and die before they can damage the sweet kernels inside.  Again, timing is everything and we only want to spray when necessary.

Richard harvesting sweet corn

With the pests dealt with and the corn crop mature, the next step is harvest.  At one time, we had a mechanical corn harvester. We would run it through the field, harvest all the corn at once, and then need to sort through the corn when we brought it back to the packing shed.  This lead to a lot of corn that would never be ripe and good, thus it was wasted. We decided we were going to go back to hand harvesting the corn. This allows us to pick only the best ears of corn at the right moment, leaving the unripe ears to grow up and become the best that they can be as well.  Every person on our corn harvest team was trained by Farmer Richard on how to look and feel for the best corn in the field. Ripe corn will have nice “shoulders” at the top of the ear, whereas an unripe ear will be pointy. If the corn looks like it has shoulders, the next step it to feel the tip, by where the silk is.  If the tip is soft, it is ready to be picked. If it is still a little stiff, it needs a few more days to let the kernels inside grow up and fill the rest of the ear. If the ear is ready to be picked, you grab the ear and twist it down, making sure you snap off as much of the stalk and leave it behind as you can. If you have too much stalk left on the ear, you’ll have to go back later and break it off before you pack it for shipping.  Once the ear is picked, you place it in your bag and move onto the next one. And all of this happens in a split second!

Sweet corn being iced before being stored in the cooler

When your bag is full, you bring it to the wagon and get ice on it right away.  This is a crucial step because icing the corn and keeping it cold slows down the sugar to starch conversion, and lets you enjoy the corn for a longer time!  When harvest is done for the day, the wagon brings the corn home where we ice it again before putting it in the cooler so it can be completely cooled.  At this point, we have done everything we can to ensure that we have grown the best corn ever. It is now your job to make sure you keep your corn cold before you are ready to use it.  Always store sweet corn in the refrigerator and eat it within a few days of receiving it.

Did we achieve “the best corn ever” this year?  We hope you have enjoyed this article about the iconic summer vegetable and have learned a thing or two about how we bring it to your table.  With all the hard work we put into it, we sure hope we managed to make a few friends along the way by giving you a few sweet ears of our golden goodness this year!

Making it Rain: Irrigation at Harmony Valley Farm

By Gwen Anderson

“Water is the driving force of all nature.”  --Leonardo Da Vinci

This year's irrigation crew: Vicente (left) and Manuel M. (right)

Ever since there have been farms, farmers have been finding ways to get the life-giving force of water to their crops.  The blessing of a nice, gentle rain at just the right time is a great boon, but you can’t be guaranteed anything of that sort in farming, despite your skill and grace at rain dancing.  As farmers, it is our job to care for our crops, to give them what they need at the time they are needing it, and that includes water.  To learn more about how we water our crops, I spent some time talking to Farmer Richard and the leader of the irrigation crew, Vicente.

Here at Harmony Valley Farm, we have two main ways to deliver water from its source to our crop fields: subsurface and overhead.  Subsurface, or drip, as we call it, is when a small hose is buried in the ground under the crop.  This hose, called drip tape or drip line, has tiny holes in it that allows water to be fed directly to the roots of our crops.  The other method, overhead irrigation, is something most people are familiar with: sprinklers.  We have two methods of using sprinklers, either many small ones connected in a line or one very large one we call “the gun,” which slowly pulls itself across the field with water pressure.

Drip line in our squash field.
Richard dug it up a little bit so we could see it in action.

Both types of irrigation have their advantages and disadvantages.  Vicente prefers the drip tape because it is a onetime set up and stays with the crop for the whole season.  When it comes time to water the crops, you just hook up the pump, check for leaks, and let it run.  The main disadvantage to this type of irrigation is that it is not reusable.  Every year, we need to purchase new drip line to replace what we used the year before.  Every spring, we bury the drip lines in the fields where we will plant the crops we use it for, and we have to pull it up at the end of harvest.  If you watched the garlic field tour video we posted to Facebook a few weeks back you saw some of our harvest crew removing the drip tape from the soil as the lifter brought the garlic out of the ground.  Due to the onetime use nature of drip tape, the price to use it to irrigate crops that are planted and harvested once, like radishes and cilantro, would be high.  Instead, we save the drip tape for long season crops, like onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes.

This years onion crop, with cover crops planted to reduce
weeding needs and sequester carbon.

There is also the problem of leaks in the drip line.  If the line isn’t buried deep enough, or if a tractor gets off course even a fraction of an inch, the drip line can get ripped by our cultivating equipment.  While the pump is running, Vicente checks the fields to make sure water is running through the whole drip line.  If there is a spot in the field that isn’t getting water, it takes a little bit of detective work to find where the water stops, sometimes just by digging up portions of the line.  Vicente says it is easier to find the leaks in beds that have plastic mulch on them.  This is because the drip line isn't buried as deep as on a regular bed since we don’t have to use the cultivation equipment on beds with plastic mulch.  When the leaks are found, he cuts the ripped section of the tape out and replaces it with a hard plastic coupler to reconnect the two pieces of the spliced tape before burying the drip line again.  In recent years, we’ve been trying different techniques to alleviate the problem of ripping the drip tape with the cultivators.  Burying the drip tape deeper is one of those measures.  Another trial technique this year has been planting cover crops in the wheel tracks of some of our fields with drip tape in them.  Not only does it mean we don’t have to run the cultivators through those fields as often, but it has the added benefit of more green, living plants sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere.  That is a win all around!

Drip line is buried when the plastic mulch is laid.

The drip tape does allow us to do something we can’t do with sprinklers and the rain gun.  We can fertigate!  Fertigation is when we use the irrigation lines to “spoon feed beneficial nutrients right to the roots of the plant,” as Farmer Richard says.  Unlike other methods of applying fertilizer, with fertigation we aren’t applying it to everything that has access to the top soil, like weeds.  We can also use this method of applying fertilizer when the crops do not need to be watered.  We hook the fertilizer up to the pump, run it through the field with minimal water to facilitate the delivery, and turn the water off when the fertilizer has been administered.  No need to run the pump for 7 or more hours like Vicente would if the field was needing water.

What do we use to fertilize our fields?  I could write a whole article on fertilizer alone, so I’m just going to stick to a few highlights.  Any of the fertilizer we use with fertigation needs to be water soluble, or able to be dissolved in water.  There are two ways to do this: either have the fertilizer already be liquid, or use a water soluble solution.  The main fertilizers we use for fertigation are either liquid fish and seaweed, or a fish powder.  When the crops are starting to put on fruit, we give them extra potassium, the mineral plants use to produce fruit.  We also provide our crops with a vast assortment of beneficial microbials and other micro nutrients that do everything from promote total plant health to deter pests.  

Sprinklers running to sprout radish and cilantro seeds.

Overhead irrigation, or our sprinklers and “rain gun”, is mainly used to germinate seeds and when the crops are small.  This is the type of irrigation we use on our weekly planted crops, like radishes, and crops with small seeds, like carrots.  To use the sprinklers, Vicente and the irrigation crew lay out aluminum pipe in the field that needs to be watered.  These pipes are connected to a pump that has been placed in a water source near the field, either the Bad Axe River, a creek, or the well at our Hammel property.  Once the field has been watered for the appropriate amount of time, the pipes and pump are picked up and either stored or moved to another field to start the process over again.

The rain gun works in much the same way, except the pipes are not laid through the whole field.  Instead, the rain gun follows a thick, sturdy hose that needs to be laid out in the field we want watered.  Vicente uses a tractor to slowly pull the hose through the field, with one of his irrigation crew members ready to radio him when the hose is to the end so it doesn’t break.  Once the hose is laid and the gun is ready to use, the pump is turned on and the gun sprays water over the field, slowly following the hose back to the pump.  As the gun “walks” through the field, it coils the hose back up on a reel so it is nice and tidy for the next time Vicente and his team need to use it.  This particular method of irrigation is only used when the fields are very dry.  Luckily, we haven’t had to use the rain gun this year.

"Rain gun" being used in our kohlrabi field in 2017.

The advantages of overhead irrigation are reusability and portability.  The aluminum pipes are long lasting, thus we can use them season after season.  Since the pipes are also portable, we don’t need to worry about damage from our cultivation equipment.  However, that portability comes with its own challenges as well.  I mentioned earlier that Vicente runs the water pumps for at least 7 hours, and may need to run it for as much as 12 hours if the crop is very dry.  That can make for a long day if the pipes aren’t out first thing in the morning.  As leader of the irrigation team, it is Vicente’s responsibility to turn off the pumps at the appropriate time and to check on them during the watering process.  It is a responsibility he takes seriously.  “Sometimes, when I’m finished for the day, and I’m tired and want to go to bed, I can’t go to bed because I have a pump out there that I need to turn off.  I have to wait until the gun gets to the reel and shut off the pump so things don’t get over watered.”

Over watering isn’t the only reason to stay up and check your pumps, either.  If the pump needs a tractor to run it, you need to make sure it doesn’t develop a mechanical problem, or you risk damaging the tractor.  Also, if a hose comes loose and you don’t have an automatic shut off switch installed, you could be pumping water directly into the ground near the pump instead of through your field.  “I’ve never done it,” Farmer Richard told me, “but I’ve heard stories of if you didn’t get up in the middle of the night and catch it, the next morning you’d have a hole deep enough to fit two school buses in.”

Beautiful peppers from 2012, the fruit of the irrigation
crew's dedication and effort.

During a drought year, like the one we had in 2012, that lack of sleep can really add up.  “You start doing that for about 6 days in a row and it gets old,” Farmer Richard told me.  Vicente and his crew were working around the clock for two months to keep our crops watered and healthy.  “That was terrible,” Vicente admitted, but he was dedicated to ensuring the crops were getting taken care of.  Farmer Andrea recalled one night that year the irrigation team was having trouble getting a water pump started, and Vicente was exhausted.  She had told him to go home, but Vicente said “I can’t go home, I need to get the water going.”  After some reassurance, Vicente took her advice.  “It was a very hard year,” Farmer Andrea stated.  “He was up early shutting off pumps and switching things over, because he had to in order to stay on top of the water needs.”

However, the crops were beautiful.  Farmer Richard admitted to liking drought.  “These excess rains just promote disease like nobody’s business.”  Even Vicente said “we should have another year like that.”  In the end, the beautiful crops are what make all the work worth the effort.  It doesn’t have to be a drought year for the effects of ones efforts to be seen, either.  “When the crop is good, and I know it is producing nice,” Vicente told me, “that is what makes me feel good.”

An irrigation pump (right) connected to a water filter (left)
running water to the drip line in our squash field.

While both types of irrigation have different uses, they do share some of the same challenges.  With either type of irrigation, we use water pumps to get the water to where it needs to be.  Vicente is in charge of all of the equipment, and needs to ensure it is safely put away when not in use.  We do our best to keep an eye on the weather, but sometimes rain catches us off guard.  If it rains a lot and we have left a pump at a site near the river, we just might loose the pump to the water.

Administratively, we need permits from the Department of Natural Resources to pump the water to our fields.  The DNR assesses whether our water usage is going to have a negative impact on other people who also use the waterways in question.  There are strict guidelines the DNR uses to ensure this, and if we are awarded the permit, we are only allowed to pump the amount of water allocated on our permit.  Due to this, we have to report our water usage at the end of the year.  We lease land and use several different water ways, so we have several different permits.  The water usage reports are filed separately for each permit.  Vicente keeps records of where he pumps water, what kind of irrigation he uses, and how long he runs it.  He then calculates the water usage and turns it in to me at the end of the year.  It is my responsibility to enter the information into our records and file the reports with the DNR.

Vicente checking the sensor in the squash field.
No need to turn the water on here!

We’ve gone over the different methods we use to irrigate our crops and some of the challenges inherent to doing so, but how do we know when to do it?  Vicente uses a device called a tensiometer to measure the amount of water that is saturating the soil.  The sensor is buried in the ground at root depth, which for most of our crops is 6 inches, and then marked with a flag so Vicente can find it later when he needs to take a measurement.  He uses a portable sensor reader that he hooks up to the sensor that will display the kPa (kilopascals) reading.  Our tensiometer is set up to read 0 to 200 kPa.  0 kPa means the soil is as full of water as it can be.  Depending on the type of plant, the kPa reading they like to be at is different, so Vicente has a chart with the tensiometer to help him out.  Onions “drink a lot of water,” as Vicente says, so he waters them when the sensor reads 25.  If the sensor reads more than 25, it means he needs to get to work immediately and give the onions a drink.  Celeriac is another crop with a desired kPa level of 25.  Sweet potatoes, on the other hand, are a tropical crop and require a lot less water, 200 kPa according to Vicente’s chart.  Most of our crops land in the 45 kPa range.

Due to the nature of the sensors, we keep them where they are “planted” for the season. We do our best to have a sensor in every field, especially in fields where we have drip lines.  While the tensiometer is an invaluable tool used for irrigation, we sometimes have to just water the plants when they look thirsty.  Vicente keeps a close eye on the crops that don’t have sensors in them, and when they start showing signs that they are in need of a drink, he and his crew set up the irrigation systems.  Richard says that generally, our crops need about an inch of water per week.  “Are they going to die if 8 days go by and they haven’t had an inch [of water]?  No, but they might stop growing.”

2018 Sweet Potato Crop, which Vicente stated he was very
proud of due to the excellent production we had.

Luckily, here in Wisconsin, there isn’t a great need for irrigation like in some of the other arid states.  Mostly, we use irrigation to promote consistent growth in our crops and to germinate seeds.  “We don’t want to baby our crops too much,” Richard stated.  “If you continuously water one or more times a week they tend to have shallow roots, so when it does get dry they are not prepared for it.”  In the end, you see the literal fruits of the irrigation team’s labor in your CSA boxes every week.  Vicente and everyone here on the farm work hard to make sure you get the best tasting, nutritionally dense produce we can offer.  It is a job everyone is proud of.  I think Richard summed it up best when he told me “there is some nervousness around irrigation, but when it works, it is wonderful.  Our crops just grow like crazy.”